


Precision in an Imprecise World

by justhuman



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Community: buffyverse1000, M/M, Post Season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-18
Updated: 2004-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:06:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justhuman/pseuds/justhuman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-<i>Not Fade Away</i>, the survivors pick each other up and find some insights in each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Precision in an Imprecise World

Charles Gunn had a reputation to uphold. Or at least he had had one when he had fought on the streets back with the old gang. On the streets it was okay to be pretty and to let the other guys see you taking some care of your bad self. After all, they all got that it was just to impress the women.

Charles Gunn had never been out to impress the ladies, at least not any more than he had been out to impress the rest of the gang. What he was was tidy, neat, an anal mother about all sorts of shit that the guy on the street just didn't know or give a crap about. Yeah, his clothes had hung carelessly about his body, but nobody ever saw a stain on them. No one ever saw him snatch a little bottle of laundry soap off the shelf of Albertsons and scrub the shirt until he nearly wore holes in it.

He was sure it wasn't obvious to anyone that he carefully rolled the toothpaste from the bottom and threw out a disposable razor at precise intervals. The oil was changed on the truck at exactly 3000 miles. It was because of this attention to detail that he gave up on the idea of making his Saturday night arrangements with Wesley more permanent. This was back when an arrangement had been theoretically possible, when Saturday nights had been about guy stuff in the living room of Wesley's apartment.

Wesley wasn't precise. Gunn knew that in a court of law, another lawyer could put up a good case to contradict that, because Wesley could be the poster child for stuffy. But Gunn knew it was all an act, following a routine to impress some jackass father that was half-way around the world. The books were in alphabet order, but there was dust on every spine. Notebook after notebook filled with every last detail, but in a scrawl that showed no attention to detail, no thought about anybody else ever reading those notes. There was always a dirty dish in the sink. It was like all the etiquette on the outside was locking down some natural messiness that had to leak out around the edges--get out in what most people considered stupid shit.

And Wesley squeezed the toothpaste in the middle.

The last person that Gunn had expected to pick him off the ground in that alley was Lindsey McDonald. Lorne had done his job, shot the lying bastard, but Lindsey managed to play act his way out of it -- one last magic tattoo to fool your enemies.

Gunn figured it was more or less suicide, but he let Lindsey drag his ass back to the apartment with a funky paint job, bandage him up under glowing runes. That was when Gunn saw it, in the way Lindsey made the symbols in the air, shot the powdered herbs at the walls and stitched him the hell back together. Lindsey was precise, a man who understood that each action had a goal, a purpose.

When he started fucking Lindsey, he found out the man knew all sorts of thing about pacing, timing, how hard he could thrust into Gunn's mouth, and how much pressure to use with his teeth when he was returning the favor. Just two boys from the street--or in Lindsey's case a dirt road-- who had learned that if you wanted to get ahead, the first thing that you needed was control and that started with yourself.

Eventually Gunn knew that this understanding would lead to a probably fatal break up just as soon as one of them wouldn't give that control up to the other. That was okay, something he could live with for now.

Besides, Lindsey squeezed from the bottom and rolled the tube up tight.

~end

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Bufyverse1000](http://community.livejournal.com/buffyverse1000/) inspired by conversations with Idyll


End file.
